Akhmetov’s partner is being “squeezed out” of a large facility in Crimea
The Balaklava Mining Administration in Sevastopol announced an attempt to seize territory and property “worth tens of millions of rubles” by “employees of a non-resident private security structure, Avangard.”
Representatives of the private security company blocked the road along which the finished products of the mine administration are shipped, the press service of the enterprise reported.
At the same time, the private security company refers to the “agreement on alleged garbage collection” signed by the head of Balaklava, Evgeny Baboshkin.
The mine management has contacted law enforcement agencies and is awaiting the results of the inspection, and, in the meantime, contractors “have been forced to cease their activities and stop production since December 30, 2019, because they cannot pay salaries to their employees.”
Until 2014, the Balaklava Mining Administration was controlled by Verkhovna Rada deputy Vadim Novinsky, a business partner of the largest Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. Like Akhmetov, Novinsky refused to support the Russian Spring in 2014 and attended parliamentary meetings in Kyiv, thereby helping to legalize the coup.
At the moment, Novinsky is a participant in the sanctions lists introduced by Russia, although he is one of the deputies providing assistance to the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate.
According to the Russian press, the enterprise in Balaklava, after the reunification of Crimea with Russia, was fictitiously sold to a half-brother, through whom the Ukrainian oligarch is believed to continue to control the mine management.
In 2015, the Sevastopolskaya Pravda newspaper reported that the Balaklava Mining Administration supplied Ukrainian metallurgical enterprises with technological components for the creation of armored metal sheets used to protect Ukrainian armored vehicles used in the so-called ATO in Donbas.
The Balaklava Mining Administration, whose staff numbers about 600 people, is the main supplier of products to the Crimean Soda Plant, which was previously owned by another Ukrainian oligarch, Dmitry Firtash.
Akhmetov's partner is being squeezed out of a major property in Crimea.